Images of space transformed by chips

This year’s Nobel prize for physics was partly awarded to Willard Boyle and George Smith for inventing the charge-coupled device (CCD), the sensor that acts as the retina of digital cameras. But long before it reached consumers, the technology was used in astronomy. Explore these images to see how CCDs showed us space as never before.

This 1974 view of the moon's surface was the first astronomical image taken with a CCD, which was only 100 pixels square (0.01 megapixels). It shows clear signs of the sensor's grid-based design.

This picture of the moon's surface was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope's wide field and planetary camera, boasting a mere 800 x 800 pixels (0.6 megapixels), installed on the telescope for its 1990 launch.

Although the resolution of the camera falls far short of today's consumer cameras, it is enough to remove the grid-like appearance seen in the 1974 image.

(Image: NASA)

This is the first ever CCD image of Uranus, taken with a portable 400 x 400 CCD sensor in 1976.

This image of Saturn, taken in 1976, was the first CCD image taken at a professional observatory. "Photographic film and CCD shook hands that night," says James Janesick, who pioneered CCD astronomy at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California.

Voyager I snapped this picture of Saturn in November 1980 using a 1000 x 1000 pixel (1 megapixel) vidicon tube, which used electron beams in a vacuum tube to convert an image to an electric signal. This technology was used in television until the advent of CCDs.

(Image: Nasa)

Ten years later, in August 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope took this picture with the wide field and planetary camera.

(Image: NASA)

After an upgrade to fix its blurry vision and install new cameras, Hubble shot this sequence between 1996 and 2000 using the second wide field and planetary camera, which now had 2.5 megapixels.

(Image: NASA)

The Cassini probe captured this infrared image when it arrived at Saturn in 2007, using its 1024 x 1024 pixel (1 megapixel) CCD.

(Image: Nasa)

Aside from being easier to put into space, CCD detectors also require less light than photographic plates to form an image.

This 1955 image of a region near the Big Dipper was captured on a photographic plate at the Palomar Observatory in California. The white staircase region was imaged again by Hubble nearly 40 years later to create the famous Hubble deep field image.

Click to the next image to see how much more Hubble could see.

(Image: University of Chicago)

Made from images taken over 10 days in 1996, the Hubble deep field picture revealed a larger and more complex view of the universe than ever previously seen.